Filed under: Productivity, Internet Tools
Top Mac feed readers face off
It's no exaggeration to say that the day I started using a feed reader, my internet life changed forever. Suddenly, instead of having to click through my regular cohort of a few dozen sites, I was able to scan hundreds of sites for the news I wanted. And while the debate over which feed reader is the best isn't as heated an affair as the whole Vi vs Emacs ruckus - Vi wins, of course - people are still pretty passionate about their chosen application.And so it was that I came across this post at Macintalk that compares my favourite reader, NetNewsWire, with that other darling, NewsFire.
While NetNewsWire takes a few hits for its dull aesthetics, it makes up for it where it matters, offering more viewing options and a built-in browser. NewsFire has more than just good looks going for it, though, such as an in-line podcast player. In the end, as is so often the case, it comes down to what you want to use it for. I don't think I'll be changing just yet.
What about you? What are you using to read TUAW's feed, or are you stuck browsing the site in Lynx? Not that there's anything wrong with that.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Scott said 8:21PM on 10-06-2006
I have to agree with you Alex, while Newfire is a nice app - pretty too, I'm sticking with NetNewsWire - I own both and I'm not making NewsFire the default yet - yet.
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M-A. said 8:24PM on 10-06-2006
I was one of those browsing for the news, but now I'm under NetNewsWire Lite.
Works great for me so I don't need anything else.
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Laurie said 8:28PM on 10-06-2006
I like that you posed this question again Alex, since it's been a while since we've done a reader poll on it I believe and the vibe does seem to change every few months. That, and Chartier and I were discussing this very topic a few hours ago on iChat :)
I'm using Google Reader more and more these days because once I finally got all my feeds (over 500) reorganized it was the only one that seemed to handle the load. It's not perfect, and I find it behaves best in OmniWeb more than any other browser, and that bothers me since I am a Safari loyalist, but I figured once I had to start firing up Firefox again for the TUAW CMS I might as well keep a 3rd browser open too :)
I love NNW and I wish I could keep using it but once I tipped over about 400 feeds it became impractical to keep using it. No matter what I did it was a real resource hog, took forever to open and was extrememly sluggish even when it wasn't actively doing anything else. I thought Newsgator would be the solution since all my NNW feeds were already there, but Newsgator I found almost as sluggish as NNW had gotten!
I have, in the last few months tried pretty much every other Mac news client I could find, even though I'd tried most of them before. Vienna and Newsfire were both promising but still couldn't handle the sheer number of active feeds I have.
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chris said 8:33PM on 10-06-2006
Two words...Google Reader. Have your feeds with you anywhere.
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Dan Arel said 8:34PM on 10-06-2006
I use Vienna. open source!
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BillSaysThis said 8:50PM on 10-06-2006
Another vote for Vienna here! What is so much better about NNW or NewsFire that I should pay for them?
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Aaron said 8:54PM on 10-06-2006
I use Vienna as well. It's an excellent quality app; I would highly recommend it to anyone. Plus it's as cheap as free!
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Hermit said 9:06PM on 10-06-2006
Vienna is definitely my favourite for a separate (open source) app, and I do like how active their development team is, but to keep up with the feeds I have and from how many different places, the (recently improved) Google Reader is now my favourite. So the best portable option for me is Portable Firefox set to default to Google/Google Reader.
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Angel said 9:12PM on 10-06-2006
I've tried other readers including NewsFire and Google Reader, but NetNewsWire is my number one choice. Since I work on PCs during the day, I use Netvibes for my favorite feeds to read anywhere.
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Billfred said 9:13PM on 10-06-2006
Vienna. Not so much for the open source reasons (although that's cool with me) than the fact that it does what I want at the price I want.
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Marc D said 9:20PM on 10-06-2006
Vienna.
The only way I found it was when I went to download a new version at MAcupdate, and saw someones comment that stated something about Vienna being just as good and free. It is.
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David said 9:24PM on 10-06-2006
I personally try to find free alternatives for everything. But then again, I am a poor college student with very little cash to spare. Because of this restraint, I use Vienna. I have lately, however, started using Safari's built-in RSS viewer simply for the convenience of not having to launch a third-party application.
I am certain, though, that if I had money to play around with, I would definitely pick up either NetNewsWire or NewsFire.
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D'Arcy Norman said 9:27PM on 10-06-2006
BlogBridge all the way. Cross platform open source java. Has tools to prioritize and filter items, rather than just dumbly displaying them.
http://www.blogbridge.com
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Mark Fleser said 9:27PM on 10-06-2006
I love the interface of NewsFire but I like the viewing method of NetNewsWire so I think I'll stick with that.
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elmusafir said 9:40PM on 10-06-2006
Vienna, no doubt.
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Ben said 9:57PM on 10-06-2006
I had a similar conflict a few weeks ago: http://nosugrefneb.wordpress.com/2006/09/26/breaking-up-with-flock/ . NewsFire came out as the winner then, but I've since switched over to NNF because the former was just too slow and slowed everything else around it down too.
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Dave said 9:58PM on 10-06-2006
Vienna puts the others to shame, and it's free!
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Dan said 10:06PM on 10-06-2006
I use NewsFire and love it. Ive used Vienna too and like it.
I know this is mac post but what do people use on a PC ?
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Giovanni De Stefano said 10:11PM on 10-06-2006
How can you ignore the freeware excellence of Shrook, for instance? It is my first and only feedreader on a Mac.
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Chris Betcher said 10:19PM on 10-06-2006
Vienna. 5 Stars. I can't see any functional difference between it and NNW, but Vienna is free and open source.
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